Earlier in April, the City of Seattle finally released the official 2015 map of the Seattle City Council Districts. The reason for the map and the new way of electing our city councilmembers being (via seattle.gov):

In 2013, Seattle voters passed a measure amending our city’s charter to establish City Council districts. In 2015, voters will elect seven out of the nine City Council members by district. The remaining two positions will be elected “at-large” (city-wide) in positions 8 and 9.

Our Ravenna neighborhood is located in Council District 4, along with Bryant, Roosevelt, View Ridge, Sand Point, Windermere, Laurelhurst, Hawthorne Hills, the University District, Eastlake, half of Wedgwood, most of Wallingford, and a touch of Fremont — which is why it is so great to finally have a city-approved map with hard boundaries.

Northern portion of the Council Districts map. Click to open the interactive version.

Within the interactive map above, Seattle residents can search for their address to find out which Council District they are located in, or just zoom in and around to see what neighborhoods are located in which districts.

We hear a lot from interest groups but not enough from families because they are busy working to get by. So the newsletter highlights not only important neighborhood issues, but fun stuff that will be engaging and relevant each month.

Lacia Bailey, with her pet goat, speaks with Paul Schulte, brother of Dennis Schulte, during a Thursday prayer vigil at Sand Point Community United Methodist Church in Seattle for Karina Ulriksen-Schulte and her son, Elias Schulte. (Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times)

UPDATE (Friday, March 29): We attended Thursday’s prayer vigil at Sand Point Community Methodist Church, and share a bit of it with you here.

Pastor Law says that Judy and Dennis Schulte’s church back home is holding a vigil at this time as well.

The Schulte family, including the grandparents, Judy and Dennis, had started attending the church recently. The grandparents were able to celebrate the birth of their new grandchild with the congregation before they passed.

Sunset in the west from outside the church.

Staff from Fire Station 40, located in Wedgwood, attended the service. Lieutenant Milton was one of those who responded to the scene on Monday, March 25:

Lt. Milton, representing Fire Station 40, who is here: “I want to thank this church for having us, because I know I need it.”

A “prayer for healing for Karina and Baby Elias” was read responsively, and included the lines “give them courage,” “give them your strength,” “may they feel your comfort,” and “may they be reminded of the great love in this community for them.”

Pastor Law closes in prayer, as a child laughs. Many families here tonight.

Notice about the prayer vigil posted at the memorial on NE 75th St. Photo courtesy Lacia Lynn Bailey.

Thursday is also Maundy Thursday, the fifth day of the Christian Holy Week when the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles is commemorated.

UPDATE (Thursday, March 28): Looks like a memorial vigil/walk is forming up to take place on Monday, April 1, starting at the Wedgwood Top Pot at 70th and 35th, and traveling to and from the memorial site at 75th and 33rd. 4-5 PM. Details here.

Shortly before 1:00 PM this afternoon, sections of seven Northeast Seattle neighborhoods lost power. At peak, approximately 3,800 customers were affected.

Screen capture of the outage at its peak taken from Seattle City Light’s System Status webpage.

Parts of Roosevelt, Ravenna, Bryant, Wedgwood, View Ridge, and Sand Point all took a hit along NE 65th St, while nearly all of Windermere went down. The estimated time of restoration was listed at 3 PM, but many customers are seeing their lights coming back on ahead of that time.

Seattle City Light crews were responding to a power outage Tuesday that affected about 3,600 homes and businesses in the Ravenna, Roosevelt, View Ridge and Wedgwood neighborhoods of northeast Seattle.

The outage started about 11:20 a.m. A cause was not immediately known. An initial estimate for restoration of service was set for 3 p.m.

The general boundaries of the outage were NE 94th Street on the north, NE 65th Street on the south, Roosevelt Way NE on the west and Lake Washington on the east.

As of this posting, the cause is listed as “tree,” and the restoration time is estimated at 3:00 PM.

As we were calling the North Precinct about the dangerous traffic conditions at 15th Ave NE and NE 75th St — signals are out and many drivers on NE 75th St are not noticing and treating as a four-way stop — the officer on the other end of the phone blamed the outage on two transformers lost from the tops of poles, but we haven’t had confirmation of the exact cause from Seattle City Light.